Why, oh why can’t they see it? Why can’t they believe the women in their lives who tell them? Why can’t they accept that even though they are kind and gentle and loving and all sorts of good people, some men simply do not treat women as equally dignified?
When I was in the third grade, a classmate lifted my skirt up in the playground, just for fun, and I slapped him and made his nose bleed. The teacher immediately took him to the nurse’s office. I got a couple of days detention after school. When he came back from the nurse’s office, he was not interrogated, told to apologize (which I was) or otherwise punished in any way or form.
When I confronted the teacher with this -in my view- unfair treatment, she said , ‘Well, you made his nose bleed. He didn’t actually touch you, did he? Just your skirt.’ My stomach knotted out of pure anguish and I know my face must have turned red. The teacher then tried to comfort me and soothe my hurt feelings. She leaned closer and whispered, ‘It’s because he likes you, you know…’ A smile and a wink, and I was left wondering if I’d heard right, if she had really just told me that a boy had embarrassed me in public, not got called out for it and that I had to be gracious about it because ‘he liked me’. So should I expect to be humiliated by the men who cared about me in the future? Was that it? Even at the tender age of nine, I could not grasp that someone who said they loved me would embarrass me on purpose.
I refused to believe that it was the norm. I thought that it must be because I was so weird. I provoked these attitudes.
The only thing is that as you grow, you see it repeated. It happens to you again and again. Small almost insignificant details, snippets of conversations about who is ‘easy’ and who is a prude.
A friend who gets groped in the corridor of school and the onlookers laugh or ignore it. A serious girl who is told she’ll never have a boyfriend because she doesn’t smile enough.
A friend of your best friend’s boyfriend who grabs your hand the second you’re introduced and even though you pull your hand away, it takes three firm, loud ‘No!’ and finally a kick in the shin for him to get the message that a.) You are not his girlfriend, just a friend of his buddy’s girlfriend; and b.) You do not wish to have your hand held. He truly believed that if he wasn’t bold, I’d find it offensive.
You marry young because you want to be considered an adult. No matter how responsible you are, you never seem to get the credibility or the respectability you always thought would come with being dependable and hardworking.
You become a nag when you realize you’re the only adult in the relationship, years down the line. You grow resentful and hopeless, but still you trudge on.
Why did I become a nag? I didn’t want to, really I didn’t.

I suppose that there’s just so many times you can be blamed for someone else’s attitude or behavior and not slash back in anger and frustration.
I guess there’s too many things we take for granted as intrinsically ‘feminine’ and we never tell the good men about them: the fondling, the creepy jokes, the whistles and catcalls, the backhanded compliments, the tears over someone calling you ‘bitch’ when you’re fourteen and said you didn’t want to be kissed. We assume they’re part of being a woman, like having breasts and getting pregnant. We are taught to just get on with it and pay no attention, like we would to a nasty mosquito.
But these things make you numb. They force you to numb yourself in order to not feel dirty, disgusting and guilty.
No, I am not exaggerating. And yes, I am definitely one of the lucky ones. I’ve never been harassed (too much) or raped. But I did get all sorts of gossip when my oldest son was born about his not looking enough like his dad. And I am being ostracized after getting divorced, which is not happening to the other person involved.
So, no, I don’t feel at all dignified. I don’t feel protected because I am a woman. I don’t feel respected by others, although I have respected others. I am petite and I don’t go out at night because I don’t feel safe to do so, either morally or physically. And there certainly aren’t a dozen men waiting to do my bidding, as I was informed was the case recently. Trust me, I know.
Most men are good men. Wise and kind and loving. It is to them that we must bare our scars and hope that they see the truth, and that they finally believe us.